Portrait of The Last Remaining Pinball Wizard 296
Ant writes "Shacknews posted BusinessWeek's Pinball's Last Remaining Wizard article that is a portrait piece on Gary Stern, president and owner of Stern Pinball, which is the last remaining pinball manufacturer in the world. Yearly, his company produces 10,000 hand-built machines and designs about 3-4 different models. A few of their most recent releases used licensed rights of the Sopranos and The Simpsons."
Pinball Wizard? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, hang on....
Re:Pinball Wizard? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Pinball Wizard? (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, com'on, who are you? Tommy?
Re:Pinball Wizard? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Seen lack of playability imagination (Score:3, Interesting)
High Speed
Guns N Roses
and my all-time favorite:
Theatre of Magic
I've owned a few pinball machines, and loved them literally to death. That's the problem with these things, they break too easily. I love to find an arcade that has a few machines- they don't even have to be good- as long as the flippers are strong, and the targets all work.
Re:Seen lack of playability imagination (Score:5, Funny)
Ewww...
Tommy - The Who (Score:4, Funny)
Not the way I know it... (Score:2, Funny)
Sure runs a successful pinball-producing company.
*riff*
Re:Tommy - The Who (Score:2)
World Pinball Championships (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.papa.org/papa8/ [papa.org]
Lyman works at Stern, incidentally - many of the former Bally/Williams designers and programmers either work at Stern or do contract work for them. Quality has improved considerably as a result.
K
Deaf, dumb, blind? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Deaf, dumb, blind? (Score:5, Funny)
Sits there like a statue, reloads like a machine,
Clicks on the day passes, gets the first post clean,
Smokes crack like he's got mod points, never seen him fall,
That insensitive clod - Slashdotting Stern pinball!
He's a Slashdot wizard, there has to be a twist!
None of my business where he got those supple wrists...
Slashdot Pinball (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot Pinball (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot Pinball (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Deaf, dumb, blind? (Score:2)
Re:Deaf, dumb, blind? (Score:5, Interesting)
When he was young, he got a big magnet from an old radar that had been scrapped. He snuck it into the arcade in his backpack with the intention of manuevering the ball through the extra life gate with it. Unfortunately, when he moved it over the ball, the ball jumped up and smacked the glass with enough force to break it. He had to refine his technique a little bit and pick a different arcade, but it eventually worked.
Re:Deaf, dumb, blind? (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for Stern back in the 1980's, and I can tell you that pinballs are chrome plated copper! Non-magnetic, and for a reason - the parent tells exactly why.
However, there were a FEW games that used ferrous core balls for "Magna-Save" or other effects (Black Knight, Circus Voltaire, for example). However, those games are multi-level and the glass is waaaay up above the ball, to far for any reasonable-sized magnet to influence.
But those were made in later days, back in the olden days, they used the copper based balls almost exclusively to prevent fraud via magnets.
Shake It! (Score:4, Funny)
I hate to say it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh FP btw!
Addams Family (Score:4, Interesting)
Pat Lawlor's finest creation in my opinion. That man was so damn prolific, and passionate about his machines. One of the defining quotes of his, which sort of sums him up:-
"Anyone in this business who designs something looks at that product like it is one of their children. You take a year to create this thing, put your own personality into it, and heaven forbid something should happen when you release it because it's like your child is misbehaving. You become attached to the games and they are important to you."
A true craftsman.
Re:Addams Family (Score:2)
Re:I hate to say it.... (Score:2)
I recently gave up my arcade [badolato.com] in order to keep from having to throw everything in storage and then move it, when our new house is finished being built (a lot needed work so wasn't that big a deal to dump em). The only part that really hurt was the selling of my High Speed and Pinbot machines. I miss them.
But, when I move into my new pla
Re:I hate to say it.... (Score:2)
Case in point. I once played "Hook"(based off the movie). It was indeed a non-bally/williams machine. Got so bored with it I left the machine after 15 mins with 4 credits on it.
Pinball 2000 was a dud though.
Re:I hate to say it.... (Score:2)
Funhouse (It's getting....*late*)
Whirlwind (for those hot summer nights)
Earthshaker (don't sit your drink on here, do sit your gf on it tho).
*sigh* They wont be like that again.
Hedley
Re:I hate to say it.... (Score:2)
Ahh, there was two more on my list of good pins. The Comet, which I made jump and rattle like it was going out of style. And The Cyclone, which had great mecha
Best machines evar!! (Score:2)
Star Wars [ipdb.org] - DataEast
The best machines, from DataEast, were the movie machines because they had all of your favorite lines.
"Shoot the Death Star", "Ian Freeze!", ah that was fun. It was like being part of the movie (not really, but fun!)
Internet Pinball Database:
http://www.ipdb.org/ [ipdb.org]
Re:Best machines evar!! (Score:2)
Letting Timmy fry on the electric fence was one of my favorites. It was pretty hard to get 30 jet bumper hits too... so I was glad he died.
SYSTEM FAILURE was what made that game great.
"Swords of Fury" was good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, now those were the days.
Re:"Swords of Fury" was good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Swords of Fury" was good. (Score:2)
Re:"Swords of Fury" was good. (Score:5, Informative)
First thing, it doesn't have to have one. The operator can adjust the game so that it doesn't require one. This is good because the ceramic pinball has become a rather expensive part, going, I've been told, for over a hundred dollars on eBay. It's bad because many of the game's features rely upon this ball, and turning it off in settings will disable one or two of its special features, and result in arbitrary metal balls being labeled the Powerball for purposes of Powerball Mania.
The primary physical effects of the ball upon the game are:
* It's lighter than a standard pinball, and thus tends to be shot around a bit faster and is thus a little more difficult to react to, and is more likely to go down the outlanes.
* It's very slightly larger than a standard pinball, and thus it's a tiny bit more difficult to make some shots with it, including the Slot Machine.
* Most importantly, since it's not made of metal, magnets do not affect it, and the game can use its different electromagnetic characteristics to detect when it's in one of the holes on the board, and thus it knows when it's in play or when a certain shot (Piano) has been made with it.
The magnets thing is important because Twilight Zone, like Addams Family, has magnets beneath the table that turn on at special times in order to influence the ball. But while the magnets in Addams Family are there to mess up the player during multiball ("Feeeeeel the power!"), all the magnets in Twilight Zone help the player. The magnets in the orbits stop the ball when the Camera is lit or a Piano shot is ready, allowing the ball to slowly fall down over an upper flipper, greatly increasing the chances of making those difficult shots. They also turn on during multiball, where these shots are of even greater importance. And since orbit shots are the ones that get stopped, the ball is rarely sent blasting around and down towards the lower flippers at full speed, resulting in fewer drains on an otherwise drain-happy table. (Also, the ceramic ball is useless on the mini playfield, with the magnetic flippers, so the game will try to keep it out of there.)
The ceramic pinball, also known as the "Powerball," is subject to none of these effects. Because of this, left orbit shots are worth extra points, and a shot to the right orbit loads it into the gumball machine, starting "Powerball Mania," one of the more lucretive modes in the game. Powerball Mania takes one ball out of the gumball machine (guarenteed not to be the powerball since it just went in) and two out of the trough and challenges players to win the mini playfield *during* multiball.
More interestingly, it's possible to lock the Powerball for multiball, and start it too. If a jackpot is made with the powerball (rather difficult because the player doesn't get the benefit of the magnet setting him up for a Piano shot), the game "knows" it, and doubles the jackpot award for doing so!
But from a design stance, the most interesting thing about the Powerball is that it's a special pinball that the game can identify. At the start of a game it can either be in the gumball machine, in the trough, or even up in the lock. It's one more non-deterministic element for the game, one more aspect that carries over from game to game, like progressive jackpots. These features are part of what gives pinball its enduring charm, the idea that games are part of a larger continuity instead of starting completely over from an unvarying initial state each time.
The ceramic pinball, it should be said, isn't hollow like a teacup but solid, and is not at all fragile. It can take about as much punishment as the metal balls in the table.
That's about it. Any questions?
Re:I hate to say it.... (Score:2, Interesting)
After all, hearing Gimli say "Extra Ball!" and Frodo "We go through Moria!" is really fun.
Re:I hate to say it.... (Score:2)
Pinball Mods (Score:3, Informative)
If you like Attack from Mars, you should see the cool LED mod kit [ufopinball.com] someone put together for it.
Re:I hate to say it.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I think you've got it backwards. My friends and I used to play at lunch every day. The more you play, luck becomes less and less of a factor. Which means the more good players there are out there, the less $$ the tables produce. For about $1, 3 or 4 of us got a good hour or more entertainment.
It's frustrating as hell when the game isn't working right though, and that's the state of most machines these days. I think it's half "too much maintenance required" and half "if it works, people start beating it."
Competition? (Score:4, Interesting)
You'd think that with a lot of arcades around the world using pinball machines, some other companies would want to compete with these guys... or perhaps there's such a huge monopoly that everyone else just gives up. Makes you wonder about monopoly laws, though...
- dshaw
Re:Competition? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Competition? (Score:2)
Re:Competition? (Score:2)
Re:Competition? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Competition? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Competition? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it. Would you want to devote all the time, money, and resources into building a company that will only produce 5,000 units a year?
Re:Competition? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Competition? (Score:5, Informative)
As a matter of fact just a few days ago an Australian company bought the rights to the Bally name and to reproduce most of Williams' parts.
They are also developing their first pinball machine which should be out later this year.
There's life in the silver ball yet!
(and for you RGP'ers out there: TZ, CFTBL, Farfalla, Firepower, Gameshow, Zac Circus)
Re:Competition? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned these guys [pinballnews.com] yet.
Rumor has it the guy in Australia may move production of cabinets and associated hardware to China & surrounding areas. This should result in massive savings since putting a cabinet together is extremely hand-labor intensive, since it's made of tons of components.
But moving to video takes care of the tremendous maintenance required after purchase, which affects both operators (guys who have to run around constantly
Re:Competition? (Score:3, Informative)
Followed by Gary Stern's Reply http://www.pinballnews.com/news/bally2.html [pinballnews.com]
As well as some pictures http://http//www.pinballnews.com/news/australia6.h tml [http] of the whitewood Wayne is working on
Re:Competition? (Score:2)
Re:Competition? (Score:2)
I do think there has been a tremendous amount of consolidation of parts or development of "tool kits" over the years. The old machines (I started playing as a kid in the 70s) were definately all analog, tons of relays, and tons
Pinball helped me nab my wife! (Score:5, Interesting)
The Birthday/Proposal Story [keegan.org]
Of course, Theatre of Magic is a Bally machine, amd they're already gone. :(
So whose with me? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So whose with me? (Score:2)
If it were that simple, the market wouldn't be so empty. That's not to say there isn't an opportunity that others have missed (or perhaps they followed the mantra that any business that "merely" turns a decent profit isn't profitable enough *cough*).
But frankly, I'd want to investigate the market further before I threw money at it.
Re:So whose with me? (Score:2)
Re:So whose with me? (Score:2)
Actually that is what happened to Williams. They were only making a small profit from their pinball division, but their slot machine division was a license to print money.
So they closed the pinball side because it wasn't profitable enough in comparison.
Re:So whose with me? (Score:2)
It's a fair move if (for example) the pinball division's sales were having an adverse effect on the slot machine division's. Or if, say, continued profits made by the pinball division would have involved high risk, or required investment that could have
Virtual pinball, use for PPUs (Score:4, Insightful)
The 3d effects and models have been around for a while, but what makes most computerized pinball games lame to me is their arbitrary and clunky "feel" when the ball interacts with the environment.
Physics processing units might add that extra kick of realism and make it easier to stomach the dwindling population of real pinball machines. Lot of room for force feedback pinbabll controllers here.
-dameron
Re:Virtual pinball, use for PPUs (Score:3, Interesting)
However, last I heard vpinball is no longer being developed and is a closed-source Windows-only application. Ah well...
I occasionally fire it up on my home-built arcade machine that has pinball flipper buttons on the sides of the machine.
Nothing beats the real thing though. There is just so much "stuff" in a pinball machine. The real ones are much easier to see what's going on. A 2D pinbal
Re:Virtual pinball, use for PPUs (Score:2)
Greatest Pinball Machine of all time (Score:3, Insightful)
AMAZING!!!
Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time (Score:2)
Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time (Score:2)
I'd go with Scared Stiff!
Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time (Score:2, Interesting)
Tommy? (Score:2)
Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:5, Interesting)
Once every couple of years I'll go to play a pinball game and reconfirm why I stopped: the game never seems to work properly. A flipper will be half dead, the ball will get stuck in some bizarre part of the board, or the game itself will be dead. I'm sure it's because the games don't get a lot of play and therefore see less maintenance, but it's a vicious cycle that, for me, started with the game costing $0.50.
Nowadays I see machines set to $1 to play. I'm not going to risk $1 on a machine that, these days, seems to have a 90% chance of being broken.
It's a shame to see that there's only one pinball machine manufacturer left, but I'm unwilling to pay $1 each time to help them out.
You can always play old pinball in Windows... (Score:4, Interesting)
PinballSim.com [pinballsim.com]
Visual PinMame Guide [mameworld.net]
VPForums [vpforums.com]
Re:Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:3, Interesting)
These days I'd just as soon spend my money on a playstation game and not have to deal with the poorly kept up games and the lack of creativ
Re:Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:2)
Re:Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:2)
Re:Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:2)
I learned the game on that table. Get to Earth, Special, and just two planets away is the Sun for another Special. Good times.
Re:Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:2)
Learn to play better.
There is some luck in pinball, but skill is the determining factor. There's a reason the same guys keep winning tournaments.
Hey, you could always get a UK pinball machine. They have a player-controlled post between the flippers; without one they are considered a game of chance. Silly Britons!
Re:Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:2)
Tis a sad thing. Used to be that you could figure out what arcades had techs that cared, and took care of their machines (I know, I used to spend a disproportionate amount of time keeping pinball machines in good condition vs. the video uprights). Now if you can even find a good arcade, you almost never see one that is really well maintained.
Re:Why I stopped playing pinball (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much every time I see a place that might have pinball, I stop and take a look. I have never seen one set to $1/play. Factory settings these days are $0.50/play, and there are often deals like 3 plays for $1 or 5 plays for $2. Of course you can price it however you want, but I've never seen $1/play.
That aside -- yes, they are all frickin' broken. As another poster correctly pointed out, they require some maintenance, and the operators, spoiled by no-maintenance video games, don't take the time to do it. Lazy, stupid, inbred operators helped kill this fine industry! Finding a game that works well enough to really enjoy is rare.
So what do I do? I buy my own games.
- Playing is fun, and well suits my short attention span. I can't stand a Final Fantasy RPG, but a game of pinball--that suits me fine.
- Keeping the machines running and looking good is fun in its own right, like tinkering with a classic car.
- They are a neat piece of American history (FINE, they were invented in France, but the modern form with flippers is an American innovation.)
- When you get tired of a game, it's usually easy to flip it to another collector and make your money back. I currently have about $7500 worth of games, and if I wanted I could recover all that cost in a month.
A pinball is kinetic art with lots of blinkenlights. There are simulators, sure, but the only way to really experience pinball is to play a real game. Emulated pac-man, on the other hand, is still pac-man.
Pinball as an industry is nigh dead and I don't expect it to return. But it makes a great hobby anyway.
All you video-game snobs... try to find a good, working pinball game and play it. I think you will be surprised at how much fun it really is if you give it a chance. Plus, it's more retro-cool than any old Nintendo!
Oh, for the curious: you can get a failry modern game for around $1200 if you get lucky, but the A-list games are usually $2k and up, with some stable around $3500, and a couple of super-popular games at $5-6k. I'm talking used Bally/Williams classics here.
A new-in-box Stern game can be had from a distrubutor for about $3700 if you look around. Lot of people pan Stern, and it is true they have many duds, but they have a couple of really solid recent games like Simpsons and Lord of the Rings. Stern's current best stand up quite well to the best of the classics, IMHO.
Shipping is about $250 for any kind of pinball, so the best way to buy is from a private collector (no tax) within driving distance (no shipping and you can fully evaluate before you buy).
Anyone who buys a $5k Stern from Sharper Image needs to be punched for extreme silliness.
Anyone in Seattle who wants to play my games is welcome to come by.
emulate most pinball games (Score:4, Insightful)
You need Vpinmame [vpinmame.com] and Visual Pinball [randydavis.com] working together. It's a little complicated to get setup, but it works well. You then need to download table files.
There are some good sites on how to make them work together, but I don't want to slashdot them.
Re:emulate most pinball games (Score:2)
Anyone who talks of emulating a pinball machine is obviously not a pinball player.
Pinball is all about feel: The bumpers, the angle of the table, how easily the machine tilts,
how 'fast' it plays and how tight the out lanes are on both sides.
A good pinball player can slide, shake, and bump a machine to keep the ball in play. You can't emulate that.
Re:emulate most pinball games (Score:2)
Still, I think it helped me improve my timing somewhat, as I was forced to do without that and still keep the ball in play. Addams Family was the best I had available to me at the time, though I also loved Twilight Zone -- except for what seemed to be the unnecessarily large gap between the flippers. I lost more quarters to that gap than I should have. I guess the concept worked, though -- I kept playing.
Memories... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, enough wallowing in nostalgia for me - I'm still an avid pinball fan, and look forward to the day when I can own my own machine. It's nice to see such dedication to a wonderful form of electro-mechanical art.
Huxley
Re:Memories... (Score:2)
The best one that i've ever played, and got my ass kicked left and right was the Addams Family pinball. They had the gravity cranked up just a little higher than usual, making for some interesting situations. We broke it on more than a couple of occasions.
Re:Memories... (Score:2)
I have a real Flight 2000 (Stern) and a Fireball (Bally) both real classics, Fireball was the first multi-level machine (small upper table but, hey...) and Flight 2000 was one of the first "wide body" style games.
I highly recommend owning one. It's a cool piece of history, an excellent conversation piece, a nice bit of
Gone with arcades (Score:5, Interesting)
Since pinball machines break down [damned mechanical beasties] pretty often, the guy would often spruce them up, and/or replace the little broken bits here and there.
With arcades moving to smaller, less dedicated areas [in movie theatres for example] they don't replace the machines as often. If the machine breaks a little after 2 months, suddenly it's less desirable for maybe 4 months rather than 1.
Futher the larger, less complex video games meant the video game guy turned into more of a mover rather than a mechanic. Pinball machines stay broken longer, or aren't fixed as well. They make less money.
A shame. Pat Lawlor should be as famous as Sid Meier or Will Wright or Chris Sawyer.
Cost? (Score:2)
Re:Cost? (Score:2, Informative)
A new Stern pinball is typically around the $4000 mark. Retailers charge a lot more (like $5.5k) but if you shop around you can get them for $3700 - $4000.
Pinball -- Rules (Score:2)
Re:Pinball -- Rules (Score:2)
I worked for Atari Games (Score:5, Informative)
The big problem with Pin Ball and Video Games is supporting the hardware. Kids are brutal with the hardware and it breaks down a lot. That support costs a lot of money and the arcade owners don't want to pay for it. Pin Ball is much more brutal than Video Games, maintenance wise and that's why Williams stopped producing more than a few models of the things per year while I worked for them.
They thought the future was in Video Games, and they were right, what they didn't know is that the video games would be in the home, not at the arcade.
Coin op video game hardware was out paced by the home computer and eventually the home video game. Coin op volumes and gross margins were so low, that not much could be spent on research and that removed the graphic advantage that coin op had originally used to bring in kids.
They could still make better interfaces (steering wheels, joysticks, track balls etc) but kids were dumbed down by their Nintendo controllers, they didn't need the fancy / different controllers anymore and maybe they didn't want them either.
Pin still exists because its a physical challenge with real physics, a real ball and real flippers. Its simply fun no matter how its put together and you don't have to spend six million dollars to model people and cars, etc like 3D video games, so the development overhead is controllable.
I imagine maintenance is still high, but Stern is the only game left in town, so he can charge the right amount and the remaining operators have to pay it, they have no choice.
I didn't know he still made new pins (that's how long its been since I went to an arcade) and I think its awesome he's still going.
Raydude
From the pinhead's perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets clear up some misconceptions that I've seen in some posts thus far:
1) Why isn't there another manufacturer to compete with Stern? Monopolies are evil. Well, the problem with that is that the pinball market is very small. 10,000 units is pretty small for a global market. The article mentions that it takes about 6,500 to 7,000 units for Stern to just breakeven. Said another way, the 7,001st machine is where they start to make profit. This is because...
2) Pinballs are very expensive. Expensive to design, expensive to make and difficult to sell a decent quantity of. All told, a new-in-box machine goes for about $4,000. Damn near impossible to sell to a consumer and getting harder to sell to operators in the waning coin-op market. I suppose that there may be some ways for them to cut corners and churn out a slightly cheaper machine but if anyone has seen a Bally/Williams machine from the 90s and compared it with a current Stern product, the difference in quality is noticable. That is because...
3) In the heyday of Williams/Bally, the market was much bigger. Then it wasn't unusual to pump out 30,000 machines of the same model instead of the under 10,000 of current models. More sales equal more profit equals more development funds. The more money available general leads to better development of "toys" and new technologies (optical switches, new hardware platforms, etc). Most Williams machines have several unique "toys" in each model and added a great amount of excitement. Stern usually only puts one "toy" in a machine and isn't exceptionally exciting. That just comes from having to shave back the cost of each machine to try and make a profit easier. It's simple business math and I can't really blame them since the slack between profit and loss is very thin.
All-in-all, hopefully Stern will keep pinball alive for many many years to come. On most "pinhead's" wishlists though is for Stern to be a little bit more innovative and make machines that are a bit more complex like old Williams/Bally machines. But undoubtedly, we'll continue to keep cheering Stern on regardless because he's keeping the dream alive.
Re:From the pinhead's perspective... (Score:2)
Not quite. The Addams Family shipped about 20,000 units, and is the all-time record holder for most pins shipped. Specific models typically shipped 10,000 to 15,000 for a good run.
What Stern is shipping right now is approaching 10,000 total games for the year, not 10,000 of a specific model.
At no time did 30,000 units of any specific model ship.
Re:From the pinhead's perspective... (Score:2)
Twilight Zone was around 15,000..
In any case, the ratio was about right since current titles like Lord of the Rings had 4,017 machines made [ipdb.org].
I still have an arcade (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, where is this place? (Score:2)
1) You can rack up every feature and score and have all the lights lit up, but if you tilt before you collect, you're still busted.
2) If you can light a match from a foldover matchbook with one hand, you are sober enough to play for money.
3) There is a great satisfaction in the crr-rack sound of the slot dropping down to give you a free game.
I used to have a couple of pinball machines and a shuffle bowling-alley machine in
Reminds me of that movie "other peoples money" (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is Pinball machines are the horse and buggy of the gaming era.
Love it while it's still here... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been a huge pinball fan for many years but hardly play anymore because it's become so difficult to find machines. There are still places here in the DC area that have them, but you often have to go out of your way (then deal with the depression of seeing one forlorn pin off in the corner in the midst of swarms of video games). Also, you often find that the machines aren't being properly maintained (as others have commented). It's a real shame. Once, just a couple of weeks ago, I even had to walk away from a machine because all the balls were captured, then didn't release for the multiball, and I couldn't find anyone in the arcade to help.
There have been a lot of great games over the years... two of my favorites were Scared Stiff and Demolition Man. Terminator 2 was a real turkey, though.
I dream of the day when I can buy one or two machines for my own home and maintain them myself. No more hunting for machines, no more having to deal with lousy maintenance, and no more fretting about what I'll do if and when Stern closes up shop, since it's unlikely they'd ever be replaced. Pinball, I think, is going the way of the nickelodeon... it's been on its way out for many years, and I don't see the trend reversing. The best we can probably hope for is that the trend will bottom out and stop, but I don't see pinball ever becoming popular again.
Pinball machines last forever... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know my neighborhood arcade had one single pinball machine going for over FIFTY YEARS, with very little downtime. The machine was retired about 10 years ago, for fear it might be seriously damaged or stolen. Now a collectable.
I moved away years ago, and shortly after, all the pinball machines were removed. Coincidence, or was I single-handedly keeping those machines profitable?
It's really a shame too. MAME can keep all the old arcade games alive, and though I do admit to enjoying a couple different pinball videogames, it really can't replace a real pinball machine. At about $4,000 new, it would be completely worth it, if I could try a few out, and find one I would be sure to enjoy playing, and not some junky gimmicky box.
"Thought I was the Bally table king..." (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry to learn, though, that all his machines now are tie-ins to movies and TV shows. Half the beauty of pinball in its heyday was its aesthetic, which ranged voraciously across Americana as each table assembled a kind of comic book on glass and wood: you got legends and history and fantasy, blue collar pasttimes, pool and racing and cards, techno festishism, social trends, anatomically impossible chicks, and just plain weird and self-referential stuff about pinball. The backglass and table designs were a unique form not without their masterpieces (look up the artist Jerry Kelly--the form's Picasso--on the delightful Internet Pinball Machine Database [ipdb.org]).
Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns? (Score:2)
Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns? (Score:2)
We have a Galahad [ipdb.org] and a Friendship 7 [ipdb.org], from 1969 and 1962, respectively. The first we bought at an auction in Tennessee for $75 in 2000; the second I paid $150 for in Texas last year. (The market seems to be cheapest on the East Coast; auctions around here from places like Super Auctions [superauctions.com] are too expensive.
Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns? (Score:2)
Supply and demand (Score:2)
After all, as it gets harder to find a machine, those that really want one will pay more...
Re:Slot machines are much more profitable to make. (Score:2)
It's not just that there are super slick console systems. It's that the places where the arcades were located (if not the arcades themselves) were seen by parents to be rather dodgy. Invariably, they would be dimly lit (due to the burnt out screens), and would be relatively expensive (2-3 minutes = 50 pence/cents). For several weekends worth of gaming you could have your own arcade centre, and in the safety of your
Re:Haven't played pinball in some time (Score:4, Interesting)
Na..
All it normally takes is one multiball session and 1 or 2 trips up the ramps during the multiball.
I do miss pinball. I know of several places that still have them but I am getting bored playing the same machines over and over again, even more so when one of the flippers is weak and I know they will never get it fixed.
I remember in the early/mid 90's I used to go to a local gameroom the game room several times a week and play pinball, they had at least 20 different machines. It got to the point where my wife thought something fishy was going on.
I actually "flipped" the score playing Rollerball, It gave me another credit for exceeding the free game score a second time but it did not register as a high score when I was done playing. I had 137 million and the previous high score was 40 million. It was very frustrating to beat the previous 1st place score by just under 100 million and only get to leave my initial under second place.
Re:Ripped off Bally (Score:3, Interesting)